01 May 2026, Volume 25 Issue 3

  

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  How Literature Becomes a Thought Experiment

  XU Ben

  2026, 25(3): 5-18.

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  Thought experiments, centered on logical reasoning, aim to explore the possibilities and outcomes of theories or concepts. Thought experiments and fictional narratives share similarities in their narrative structures. Literary thought experiments use storytelling to simulate complex human experiences, providing four types of knowledge: knowledge of the world, general principles, categorical understanding, and affective knowledge. Through the lens of fiction, they offer a comprehensive understanding of human life, morality, culture, and emotions. This is similar to the process of scientific thought experiments, which test theories or concepts in controlled, imagined scenarios to gain insights into broader truths or principles. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what knowledge novels can impart that traditional thought experiments cannot, literary thought experiments represent an alternative approach. They address the shortcomings of traditional thought experiments by incorporating human experience, enabling thought experiments to transcend mere logical deduction. This approach includes multidimensional explorations of human existence, emotions, society, and morality.
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  Executable Thought Experiments: Technological Governance and the Procedural Rhetoric of Digital Games

  YI Lianyuan

  2026, 25(3): 19-29.

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  Through procedural rhetoric, digital games transform thought experiments from logical deduction into executable argumentation. Civilization VI and Frostpunk respectively demonstrate two distinct modes of implementing technologically-governed thought experiments in strategy games. The former compresses political issues into parameter adjustments, generating a procedural irony of single-metric governance, while the latter dismantles ethical issues into managerial techniques through laws and event chains, constituting an experiential scenario for outcome examination. The tension between game mechanics and representational systems provides an epistemological perspective on the ″executability″ of thought experiments, revealing how algorithmic governance obscures goals, transcodes ethical issues into operational procedures, and reallocates the action space of players/individuals, thereby re-politicizing technological issues within player experience. As executable public forums for reflection, digital games reveal the organizational capacities and boundaries of modern technological rationality.
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  See You Again (Zaijian Airen): A Thought Experiment on Intimate Relationships

  YANG Yujing

  2026, 25(3): 30-41.

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  In recent years, the reality show See You Again has attracted increasing attention and discussion, becoming a significant text for contemporary emotional narratives. Viewing See You Again as a ″thought experiment″ in the new media environment can help us better understand the epochal transformation of intimate relationships. The show constructs an extreme scenario removed from everyday life, focusing on marital emotions, yet it exposes the present paradox of what Giddens terms the ″pure relationship″: when intimate relationships take mutual satisfaction, democratic equality, and mutual growth as their aims, they instead evolve toward individualistic autonomy, self-coherence, and self-control. Meanwhile, the intervention of modern rational technologies such as psychology exposes and accelerates the disenchantment of love. ″Enchanted love″ yields to ″sober realism″ (renjian qingxing), whereby intimate relationships cease to be the self′s opening to the other and instead operate according to the principle of risk aversion and maximizing self-interest. Therefore, as a thought experiment that has extensively engaged public participation, See You Again has, on the one hand, opened up multifaceted discussions and reflections on intimate relationships; on the other hand, it has allegorically revealed the structural impasses confronting intimate relationships. Meanwhile, the reality show See You Again demonstrates the ″actualization″ and ″materialization″ of thought experiments in the new media world, as well as their distinctive advantages of massification and interactivity.
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  Fabricating Phantasms: From Sacred Codes to Digital-Intelligent Symbols

  LIANG Zhao

  2026, 25(3): 58-65.

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  The digital-intelligent age exhibits a cultural antinomy: on the one hand, algorithmic logic disenchants the world; on the other hand, virtual technologies construct a ″re-enchanted″ landscape of sensory immersion. In this context, the emerging ″digital-intelligent symbol″ appropriates the ″sacred mediation″ function of traditional symbols, fabricating a ″digital-intelligent phantasm″ with a semblance of liberation. Fantasy literature, functioning as a ″symbolic laboratory,″ concretizes latent algorithmic logic into perceptible extraordinary narratives through a transcoding mechanism, revealing the evolution of the symbol from a sacred code of social integration toward modern allegory. This process constructs a technological myth while, through allegorical narrative tension, exposing the disciplinary core concealed beneath the semblance of virtual freedom. Therefore, discerning the logic of alienation in the process whereby symbolic mediation generates the phantasm is key to re-evaluating subjectivity in the technological age.
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  Virtual Sublime: Digital-Intelligent Aesthetics in VR Space

  ZHAO Liang

  2026, 25(3): 66-76.

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  As a classical aesthetic category, the sublime is often understood as a transcendent experience triggered by contradictory affects — pain and fear intertwined with pleasure and awe — arising from encounters with nature, the humanistic realm, and religion. As digital-intelligent media become deeply embedded in everyday aesthetic practice, both the generative sites and experiential connotations of the sublime undergo profound transformation. Virtual Reality (VR) both presents and extends the traits of the classical sublime, while through technological affordances and participant agency, facilitating an expansion that can be termed ″digital-intelligent aesthetics.″ The category designated as the ″virtual sublime″ unfolds through five interwoven dimensions: retrospection (historical reenactment and temporal folding), immersion (superposition of technical and non-technical elements), embodiment (bodily projection and multisensory engagement), interaction (human-machine collaboration and group participation), and metamorphosis (flash-like switching and differentiated experiential modalities). The generative framework of the virtual sublime indicates that digital-intelligent aesthetics are not diluted by technology; rather, new experiences are activated through composite tensions, transforming the sublime from a static, noun-like category into a verbal, generative practice within digital-intelligent fields.
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  Translingual Translation and Pragmatic Enactment of Terminology in the Wave of Digital Intelligence

  XU Xinjian

  2026, 25(3): 77-87.

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  Human languages are diverse, each characterized by an integrated tradition of knowledge and practice that unites terminology, semantics, and pragmatics. In the context of the ever-intensifying wave of digital-intelligent technologies, how to achieve smooth translingual conversion of continuously emerging key terminology has become an imperative issue for both professional sectors and the broader public. While forming complementary relationships with technological dimensions such as the Internet, computing technology, and artificial intelligence, the linguistic dimension carries greater humanistic reflection and intellectual reconstruction. In this process, terminology encompasses semantics, which in turn connects thinking, cognition, and pragmatics. Given the asymmetric exchanges between Chinese and English amid the digital-intelligent wave, significant discrepancies exist in the generation and dissemination of numerous technological terms. As ″source language″ and ″target language,″ Chinese and English display profound asymmetry, with a continuously widening ″terminology trade deficit″ in their linguistic interactions. A sober awareness of this is essential.
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  Consensus, Concessive Argumentation, and Political Agenda: A Rawlsian Analysis

  REN Jiantao

  2026, 25(3): 88-104.

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  In modern political societies, that is, nation-states, achieving a minimal yet stable constitutional consensus is a necessary condition for maintaining a rule-of-law-based, rule-governed political life. In a pluralistic political community, where such a consensus originates from different comprehensive religious, moral, and philosophical doctrines, it can hardly be reached without difficult interaction among them. To this end, Rawls sets out three basic approaches to achieving overlapping consensus, namely, that different types of reasonable comprehensive doctrines may endorse the same conception of political justice each in its own way. Following Rawls′s line of thought and extending his analysis, it can be seen that, to achieve the overlapping consensus required for the effective construction and stable operation of a constitutional order, individuals and groups upholding different comprehensive doctrines must adopt a concessive stance. Through mutually acceptable concessive argumentation, they should highlight three ideas including overlapping consensus, so as ultimately to arrive at mutually acceptable basic political values and institutional arrangements. On this basis, a political agenda at the institutional level may be unfolded, fostering basic political rules and rights-based orientations that all parties are willing to observe, thereby providing a jointly maintained, stable constitutional platform for the implementation of such rules. This represents a gradual extension of Rawls′s approach from the basic structure to the operational mechanisms of institutions.
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  The Gentleman as Responsibility to the Other: The Image of the Gentleman in Confucius′s Thought

  WU Xiaoming

  2026, 25(3): 105-118.

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  The junzi, or the gentleman as described by Confucius, is an ideal personality—or rather, an ideal of what it means to be human as such. Becoming a junzi is a human achievement that one can realize through one′s own efforts. Yet one does not seek to become a junzi for the sake of personal perfection. To be a junzi is to be-for-the-other. The motivation to become a junzi comes from the other. To be a junzi is to be responsible for every human being. Faced with the other, the junzi is compelled to reflect upon himself and ask whether he has fulfilled his duty to others. Such self-reflection is a task that the junzi must constantly undertake. The junzi must cultivate himself through rites and music (礼乐). The junzi must take justice (义) as the principle in his conduct toward others, so as to avoid partiality. ″Being-for-the-other″ is the mandate of heaven that the junzi must recognize.
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  Japan′s Science and Technology Diplomacy and the Expansion of National Interests: A Case Study of the Second Abe Administration

  CHEN Yin, WEN Feng

  2026, 25(3): 119-133.

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  Science and technology diplomacy is an important pathway for expanding national interests. Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has pursued the overseas expansion of its national interests through science and technology diplomacy. After Shinzo Abe was elected Prime Minister for the second time in 2012, Japan′s science and technology diplomacy strengthened the ″industry-university-government cooperation″ system and overseas dispatch mechanism, actively built a centralized leadership system centered on the Cabinet, deeply engaged in international science and technology cooperation with a focus on ″joint research,″ proactively promoted the close integration of science and technology with diplomacy, and made science and technology diplomacy serve its overseas interests and diplomatic strategies—achieving positive results. However, Japan′s science and technology diplomacy is also constrained by factors such as slow economic growth, declining birth rates and an aging population, weakening scientific research capacity, and geopolitical influences. States should attach importance to the top-level design of science and technology diplomacy, build networked channels for multi-stakeholder engagement, cultivate an image as a global science and technology power, and proactively advance science and technology diplomacy in all respects—contributing to global scientific and technological development while achieving the expansion of national interests.
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  Theoretical Update of the Right to Reproductive Choice in AI-Assisted Embryo Selection: The Ethics of ″Blood Lineage″ as a Corrective Approach

  WU Jianfei

  2026, 25(3): 134-149.

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  Artificial intelligence-assisted embryo selection technology enables the fine-grained grading and assessment of embryo. This grants humans the right to choose the nature of their offspring without relying on gene-editing technologies, thereby evoking societal concerns of and vigilance against ″AI-assisted human reproduction,″ and prompting a renewed defense grounded in the concept of embryo dignity. Given the inherent limitations of the embryo dignity theory and its failure to take root in the Chinese context, there is an urgent need for a Chinese model to rectify the ethical foundation of the right to reproductive choice. The right to reproductive choice should be understood as an embodiment of the fundamental expectations that couples, as ″parents,″ hold for their offspring, and characterized as an ″identity-based personality right.″ Drawing on the concept of ″blood lineage″ from traditional Chinese ethical understanding helps restore the original comprehension of parent-child relations, thereby identifying the minimal consensus between parental autonomy and embryonic autonomy. Delimiting the scope of reproductive choice with reference to the preservation of ″blood lineage continuity″ helps justify the legitimacy of this right, excludes undue preference projections, and prevents the right from compressing the embryo′s future.
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  ″Sacred-Secular″ Dual Property Rights: Ritual Practice and Property Operation of ″Maimaiqi″ (Land Deeds) in West Guangdong

  LIN Weizhi

  2026, 25(3): 150-160.

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  As a symbolic contract embodying both sacred and secular dimensions, maidiquan (买地券) has long been viewed as a cultural device in Chinese folk society for mediating the relationship among deities, humans, and land tenure. Whereas existing research has focused primarily on interpreting historical texts, the maimaiqi (买卖契) custom in West Guangdong offers a vivid local case for examining contemporary ritual practices of maidiquan and their impact on everyday property order. Sacred property rights, acquired through sacred contracting, shape residents′ everyday property practices through three mechanisms: sacred constitution, sacred authentication, and sacred protection. As urbanization advances, the maimaiqi custom has spread to commercial housing, adapting its rituals to new contexts through innovation. Thus, maidiquan is not a relic of vanishing folklore; it remains active in contemporary society, profoundly shaping people′s conceptions and practices of property rights.